


escape velocity

by cupidsintern



Series: also on tumblr! [17]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Companionship, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Post-Graduation, Pre-Season/Series 03, Summer, Tenderness, kinda? kind of a character study of steve, proposal but not a marriage one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27188575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupidsintern/pseuds/cupidsintern
Summary: Early summer is always.. Weird. It hasn't sunk in yet that it's all over, especially if you live in a town as small as Hawkins where taking a different route to the main drag takes you past the high school, and your brain tells you ‘hey you’ve gone there every day for the past four years.’Steve’s having a hard time with the whole thing, with Billy talking about college, Steve trying to pretend he doesn't want to beg to go after him, knows Billy would probably say yes- but doesn't want him to say it out of pity.Steve doesn't want pity. And he doesn't want to have peaked in high school.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: also on tumblr! [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725826
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	escape velocity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jill_ian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jill_ian/gifts).



> Happy birthday jill!!!! u make me cry with fics all the time so hopefully this at LEAST makes u feel one (1) feeling. You're amazing u dont even know <3

High school is stupid. 

You spend four years trying to be the smartest at filling out paperwork, only to find out not only are you not good at filling out paperwork, but you didn't even need to be good at it cause you’re not going to college (more _important_ paperwork school) anyway. So you could have saved yourself a lot of tension headaches and all-nighters if you just. Didn't. 

At least you get to sit in a chair for three hours in the blazing sun listening to _Pomp and Circumstance_ on an infinite loop, right?

That's pretty exciting. 

“Do you think the band hates this as much as we do?” Billy murmurs, leaning a little closer in his chair next to Steve on the stadium grass. He lets his knee knock against Steve’s.

“Probably, right? They must.” Steve knocks back.

The nearest teacher shushes them. Graduation is serious. 

Billy has a set of those tassels hanging around his neck. The honor student ones. Steve doesn't have any tassels. He did consider streaking under his grad gown though. Not like anyone would care. 

Not like he didn't want to just be out of her already but-

But it kind of… scared him. The idea of not being in high school anymore. He didn't know how to do anything other than High School and he wasn't even as good at it as he had first thought he was. Maybe, you know… maybe he’d peaked.

“You haven't peaked,” Billy says first thing after the ceremony’s over, last thing before all the parents come pouring out onto the field and Billy doesn’t super like interacting with Steve when his dad is around, which doesn't bother Steve so much as it makes him just love Billy more. Try and love him harder, more, even standing ten feet away talking to their respective families and shaking too many hands like maybe… maybe being in love means something worthwhile. Something more than stupid high school.

Steve likes loving Billy. He likes how things are, now that they're not up in the air. Now that they actually talk. Now that they're friends. 

“Pulling the friends card on me?” Billy had said in mock anger, smelling like shower, laying the wrong way in Steve's bed. “Right after coming on my face.”

Steve was blushing too hard. “I just meant- you know. I like you! I like you and I _like_ like you.”

“Hm,” Billy had hummed. “Earlier you said you love me.”

“I… yeah.” Steve said more quietly, playing with Billy’s fingers. “That, too.”

They didn't get to see each other the night after graduation though. Steve was too down to go to the grad party, didn't want to keep Billy behind. Billy offered to stay a million times. 

“I want you to have fun-” Steve argued.

“Hard to have fun without you around.” Billy had smiled, but eventually left. 

Steve’s parents were home anyway. 

Early summer is always.. Weird. It hasn't sunk in yet that it's all over, especially if you live in a town as small as Hawkins where taking a different route to the main drag takes you past the high school, and your brain tells you ‘hey you’ve gone there every day for the past four years.’

Steve’s having a hard time with the whole thing, with Billy talking about college, Steve trying to pretend he doesn't want to beg to go after him, knows Billy would probably say yes- but doesn't want him to say it out of pity. 

Steve doesn't want pity. And he doesn't want to have peaked in high school.

It’s Billy's idea to break in. Steve says it again _“I’ve peaked”_ and _“only place I ever amounted to anything”_ and Billy says _“drama queen”_ and _“fine, let’s go back.”_

“Go back?” Steve asks, confused, but a normal amount. 

“Yeah, man, let’s break in.” Billy’s already excited. 

Break into the high school. 

I mean, it was a Sunday. A Sunday in mid June- no one would be there. And it was something to do, no one wanted to do anything in the sweltering heat- it was even too hot to fuck, which had be established when Billy had leaned over to kiss Steve and Steve had said “I love you but if you touch me with your furnace hands I’ll actually break up with you” which made Billy laugh. Billy’s laugh was the only sound that could cut through damp Indiana heat- dry, cool, pretty. 

They waited til the sun went lower.

At sunset, they took Steve's car and parked a bit away and walked in all casual in the twilight up to the chainlink that guarded the school from the very delinquents that would try to break in on a June Sunday. 

Billy calls him and Steve delinquents a lot. Steve always likes it. 

Billy’s the best thing Steve's got going for him.

After jumping the chain link, they check every door. Methodically, walk around the school talking in low tones, making sure to tread lightly- Billy even wore his converse- testing each still-sun-warm doorknob until-

“Hell yeah,” Billy whispers, all enthusiasm when one door creaks open at his push. 

It’s off the science wing. It’s always cooler at this end of the school. 

It’s been a month since Steve thought he was ‘last walking through these halls’ and it wasn't like he’d never been inside the school after hours, so the sight wasn't entirely known, it was just… surreal. He had a hard time convincing himself he didn't go here anymore. That he wouldn't just come back here, again and again, forever. 

“Well?” Billy asks him, voice tinny in the empty hallways. 

“Well, what?” Steve asks. 

“Still think you peaked?” 

“Yeah.” 

Billy shoves Steve's shoulder. “Well, you didn't. So cut that shit out.”

“I dunno.” Steve sighs. “I mean… I'm just. I’m stuck here, Bill. Never gonna fucking get out.”

“Yes you are.” Steve wishes he could believe Billy's words. 

“You don’t know that-”

“Yeah I do.” Billy kicks at Steve's shoe. “I know it for a fact. I'm gonna ask you to move out to California with me, just haven't worked up the courage yet.” 

Steve feels his stomach flip over. Billy does that sometimes. Says what he's going to say and then acts like he hasn't said it yet so it's less scary. Scary like peaking in high school. Scary like being stuck. Scary like moving away for a boy you've known for a whole year who has more promise for you and than every other person you've ever met in your entire life. 

Scary like being in love. 

“Yet.” Steve repeats. 

Billy starts walking down the hall. “Yet.” Then he turns around, hands in his jean pockets. He smiles. Steve starts walking to follow him. 

Steve thinks a lot about Billy while they walk through the school, mostly in silence. Classroom after classroom after water fountain and locker row and classroom. 

A lot of things could go wrong if he moves away. Probably why Billy’s so nervous. Steve likes being in love with Billy. He doesn't want that to change if things go wrong. 

But if he stays… then he peaked. 

_Damned if I do, damned if whatever._

“Pretty sunset.” Steve remarks, stopping to look out at the last bits of purple and peach and blue in the sky. 

“They all look like this back home.” Billys says. It’s what he alway says. Everything’s prettier in California. Except the boys. 

_“Prettiest one’s right here.”_

Steve is so nervous. He always thought he played it safe until suddenly one day he didn't. 

And Billy wasn't safe. But wasn't he? 

Steve _loves_ loving Billy. 

He’s snapped out of his train of thought though, when he sees his own locker. His locker that doesn't have anything in it now, his locker that he still knows the combo to but will forget as soon as he crosses the California state border.

Billy notices Steve's not next to him, walks back to stand closer. “What’re we lookin’ at.”

“Just my locker.”

“Surreal, huh?”

“Very.” 

Suddenly, in an almost-bad way, Steve realizes he does not want to stay here. Not in this hallway, not in this school, not in the town, this state- he’d probably leave the planet if he had the option- California feels like a different planet. Steve needs to break the orbit of this one.

And maybe it's because Billy smells like what's in the pictures on ‘wish you were here’ postcards, maybe it's how Steve feels like every time he wakes up he's a slightly different person, but he doesn't want to be here anymore. 

He didn't peak in high school. Hell, he didn't even _like_ high school if he thinks about it. He didn't get to do any of the things he actually wanted. Didn't get to have lifelong friends, didn't get to get a college acceptance letter, didn't get to walk down the hall holding hands with the guy he might book it to another state for-

“C’mere for a sec.” He says, grabbing Billy's arm. 

Billy obliges, only because he likes it just a little when Steve gets bossy. He’s still pretending he’s just humoring Steve though. “What are you up to?”

Steve guides Billy to stand just next to his locker. Looks at him for a second, then leans in to kiss him- just once. A peck really. A “hello and good morning” of a kiss. 

Billy laughs a little. “What was that for?”

Steve shrugs. “Something I wished I coulda done in high school.”

_Something I can do now._

“ _Still_ think you peaked?”

“Less so.”

Billy leans back against the lockers, smiles a little. “Excellent. I’m taking the credit.”

Steve laughs. 

It’s getting dark. They should leave soon. 

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Move to California with me.” No pity in his voice whatsoever. 

Steve’s stomach doesn't flip over this time. It's less scary. Instead, his heart beats faster, and he feels butterflies like a first kiss coming up in his ribs when he says: “Okay.”

“Yeah?”  
“Yes.”

Billy leans up off the lockers. He has to tilt his chin up a little to look Steve in the eyes with how close he’s standing. “You sure? You can say no.”

“Why the hell would I do that.” 

Billy's turn to shrug. “You've always lived here.”

“All the more reason to get the fuck out.” Steve smiles.

They start walking back. Steve laces his fingers through Billys as they walk, no ones around. 

He can almost imagine doing this during school hours, if no one cared. How nice that would be. 

But also fuck that. Fuck high school. 

Steve had better things going for him, more to see, do. More to be. High school is stupid. 

-

_“In physics (specifically, celestial mechanics), **[escape velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity)** is the minimum speed needed for a free, non-propelled object to escape from the gravitational influence of a [planet], that is, to achieve an infinite distance from it..._

_A rocket, continuously accelerated by its exhaust, need not reach ballistic escape velocity at any distance since it is supplied with additional kinetic energy… It can achieve escape at any speed, given a suitable mode of propulsion and sufficient propellant to provide the accelerating force on the object to escape.”_

Essentially, the rocket isn't trapped.


End file.
